11 January 2011

Try for a moment to accept the idea that you are not what you believe yourself to be, that you overestimate yourself, in fact that you lie to yourself. That you always lie to yourself every moment, all day, all your life. That this lying rules you to such an extent that you cannot control it any more. You are the prey of lying. You lie, everywhere. Your relations with others—lies. The upbringing you give, the conventions—lies. Your teaching—lies. Your theories, your art—lies. Your social life, your family life—lies. And what you think of yourself—lies also.

I catch myself in these lies sometimes, feel terrible shame and swear off them. They come back when I feel too smug about having caught them.

I try not to think of a lot of these leading lights of Out There as teachers, because very, very few of them know about the work, about the seriously difficult payment Jeanne de Salzmann talked about. I think of them at best as motivational speakers, guys who tackle the problem of a planetload of liars with nicer lies, less decimating lies... but they are lies.

maybe this will search

or roam around in my weekly archive

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Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.—John F. Kennedy

The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, it's just that they know so much that isn't so.—Ronald Reagan

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.—Martin Luther King

The morons in Washington are pushing the envelope of nuclear war. The insane drive for American hegemony threatens life on earth. The American people, by accepting the lies and deceptions of “their” government, are facilitating this outcome.—Paul Craig Roberts

I am a child of the South. Janet Napolitano tells me I need to be afraid of people who are labeled white supremacists but I was raised around white supremacists. I am not afraid of white supremacists. I am concerned about my own government. The Patriot Act did not come from the white supremacists, it came from the White House and Congress. Citizens United did not come from white supremacists, it came from the Supreme Court.—Cynthia McKinney

No one has to "marry" anyone else politically; no one has to embrace every tenet or belief that an anti-imperialist ally might hold. You simply have to say: "All of us, regardless of our other views, believe this truth to be self-evident: dismantling the empire will bring immediate and enormous benefits to our nation and to the world."—Chris Floyd

The power of the people on top depends on the obedience of the people below.—Howard Zinn

...the government only starts listening to its voters once the more corrupt option turns out to be untenable.—Matt Taibbi

· One out of seven American homeowners will probably lose their homes by the end of 2010.

· Only 4.7 percent of distressed homeowners who enrolled in the modification plan have gotten any help.

· Out of Obama's $75 billion program, only $2.3 million has been spent—or 0.03 percent.

Obama's performance on the foreclosure crisis—along with unemployment, the biggest problem America faces—makes Bush's laissez faire approach to Hurricane Katrina look caring and loving in comparison. If ever there were a cause for impeachment, look no further.—Ted Rall

As self-appointed champions of civilisation against barbarism, they fail to see that a certain barbarism is the flipside of civilisation itself, inseparable from its smooth operation. For every cathedral, a pit of bones; for every artistic masterpiece, human wretchedness and back-breaking toil.—Terry Eagleton

Here at home and throughout the world people are fighting back against the forces of wealth, privilege, and militarism — some because they have no choice, others because they would choose no other course but the one that leads to peace and justice.—Michael Parenti